I’ve been told a million times that I wear my feelings on my sleeve. My authentic self never learned to adorn a mask and cover my true feelings. Instead I turned to silence as my shield, and soon found myself on mute. Yes I can speak loud, clear and boldly on the other side of a pencil but verbally I turned down the volume in an effort to keep the peace. I spent so many years on BLAST with NO CHANGE that it has taken a moment to realize that the louder you get, the more your words sound like a conversation with Charlie Brown. After some very HARD conversations in which I learned that nothing I ever said would really be heard I realized that I didn’t need to talk at all; I just needed to care less.
Now don’t mistake those two words as being void of emotions. Nope that is not it. As most of you know I am very passionate about many subjects; I love hard and my loyalty is fierce but I had to take the weight of what other’s thought, spoke or did off my shoulders. I had to ACCEPT that they are who they are and they think what they think and believe their own truth, but it did not have to be my truth and it was truly not my burden. I had to care less.
When you have had an audience co-sign on the decisions of your life for so long you forget how to trust yourself. Your value and self-esteem becomes wrapped up in their approval. When you reach to pick up the phone to see what someone else thinks or how they would handle a situation before you take the time to sort out the information for yourself or to determine how it makes you feel it means that you care too much about that persons opinion of your life. Unfortunately their feelings or response begin to alter your natural response and you are now jaded unable to stay true to who you are. I shared way too much because I needed for others to care when all I needed was to step back, care less and figure out my best response even if I turned out to be wrong. Caring less means I can take more time to care about me and that is not a selfish statement, that is Me loving on ME!
